The continuing expansion of the Internet and other private and semi-private networks has led to the now widespread practice of electronic distribution of software to end users, whether as freeware, shareware, or fully paid-up licensed software. Traditionally, freeware programs have generally been small, unsupported single-purpose programs that are of limited use. Since no income was derived from these programs, there was little incentive for the creators of this type of software to undertake major development efforts. More recently, however, a new type of free software has emerged which, while free to end users, does provide income to the creator of the software via advertising incorporated into the software. This is of benefit both to the end user and advertiser, as the end user obtains useful software at no cost and the advertiser gets advertising exposure for its products or services. One well known example of this type of arrangement is in push technology products, such as Pointcast™, which permits a user to receive and display broadcasted information over the Internet. Using this software, new advertising is periodically received along with various requested types of news information (e.g., financial, business, sports) and is stored locally on the user's computer for later retrieval and display by the program.
The new advertising medium provided by the Internet has a number of significant advantages for advertisers. First, the users of the software within which the advertising is placed have, on average, much more disposable income to spend on products and services than the average user of other traditional advertising media, such as television or print. Second, the advertising can, in some instances, be targeted in various ways, such as demographically or reactively. An example of the latter of these is in push technology where the user requests certain types of information and this request is used to select the type of advertisement sent to the user along with the requested content. Third, the advertising can not only include audio and video elements as well as simple visual elements, but can also be interactive. For example, by clicking on the advertisement, the user can be provided with additional information about the advertised products or services and can even be given the opportunity to purchase the products or services electronically.
One of the most common methods of advertising via the Internet is through the use of links (e.g., uniform resource locators, known as URLs) embedded within web pages. By using embedded links, the advertisements need not be located on the same server as the web pages themselves. When the web page is loaded or reloaded, the advertising server is accessed to obtain a new advertisement which is incorporated into the web page displayed on the user's screen. These advertisements are simple graphical images (such as animated gifs) that are retrieved from the advertising server along with an associated link to additional information about the advertised product or service. While this permits new advertising to be displayed each time a web page is loaded or refreshed, and while this allows geographically unlimited advertising, it at most permits targeting of the advertisement based upon the type of information contained in the web page. Moreover, access to a new advertisement is only available during the period of time that the client computer is connected to the Internet.
Currently-available computer programs that incorporate advertising into their user interface include the necessary programming built into the software itself. That is, the various parameters relating to the presentation of the advertisement is pre-determined and programmed into the software. These parameters may include such things as where on the screen the advertisement is displayed, the display size, the duration of display, the number of times a particular advertisement is displayed, the conditions under which a particular advertisement is to be displayed, the type of action taken upon a user clicking on the advertisement, and so forth. One problem with these currently available programs is that these parameters can only be changed by replacement of the entire program with an updated, revised version, making it difficult to respond to desired changes in advertising approaches.
To provide demographically-targeted advertising, the advertiser or distributor of the advertising must obtain demographic data on its end users. Perhaps the most common way to acquire demographic data regarding users via the Internet is to request the information using a form written in html (HyperText Markup Language) and provided to the user over the World-Wide Web (WWW) using http (HyperText Transfer Protocol). This is sometimes done as a prerequisite to allowing the user access to information resources or download software from a particular web site. While authentication of demographic information obtained this way is difficult and rarely done, it has been found that end users typically provide accurate demographic data in return for free download access to software. Furthermore, studies have shown that while people are concerned about privacy issues and, in particular, do not wish to provide specific information that identifies them (such as their name, address, or Social Security number), they generally do not mind providing demographic information, nor do they mind monitoring of their computer usage as long as their usage is not associated with any specific information that could be used to identify them.
Various other arrangements have been suggested for obtaining and reporting information about an end user over a computer network such as the Internet. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,724,521 to Dedrick discloses an electronic advertising system in which a user profile is created and transferred to a metering server where it is used along with other end user profiles to charge advertiser's according to a consumer scale. The profile data is also used by the metering server to select advertisement titles that are sent to the end user for viewing at the request of the end user. When a user requests an advertisement, the metering server sends the advertisement to the end user, charges the advertiser, and provides the advertiser with profile data on that end user. The system can include client-side software which acquires and compiles information concerning the user's interaction with the advertising or other content provided by the metering server.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,732,218 to Bland et al. discloses a system for gathering data concerning an end-user's access to information resources and reporting the data back to the servers that contain the information resources. Data gathering at the client is accomplished using an applet, plug-in, or other browser extension that acquires the data and then reports that data to those servers accessed by the client, either periodically or in response to a specific request by the servers. In this way, the servers being accessed for their information resources get reported back to them information concerning the end-user's use of that information. Limited demographic information (e.g., time zone, locale, client hardware) can be included in this reporting as well.
One of the disadvantages of prior art systems that acquire data regarding an end-user's computer usage is that they are generally limited to gathering information concerning only certain limited uses of the computer. For example, in Bland et al., the focus of the gathering and use of end-user data is in the user's interaction with web pages, whether over the Internet or otherwise. Similarly, in Dedrick, the compilation of data is directed to interaction between the end-user and the advertising or other content provided by the metering server itself. By limiting the reported data in this manner, it is difficult to develop accurate profiles for the individual users that are useful in targeting the advertising.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,347,632 to Filepp et al. discloses a reception system in which both user demographics and individual system usage information can be used to target advertising. However, this information is used to select which advertisements are to be placed into an advertisement queue from which advertisements are then accessed, apparently in the order in which they were placed in the queue. Thus, this system permits targeting of advertising generally, but does not provide real time targeting of advertising based upon user actions.
Internet users typically employ browser applications and related technologies in order to access the WWW; and to locate and view files, documents and audio/video clips. Exemplary browser applications include Opera by Opera Software, Netscape Navigator, Netscape Communicator 4.6 and Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0. Browser applications are loaded onto a user's computer, and then can be used for communication over networks using protocols such as that utilized by the WWW Browsers are useful for accessing desired files and web sites, and also have the capability of storing information regarding visited or favorite web sites on the user's computer. However, it has been common practice for browsers to be employed by the user for fairly limited purposes, such as for accessing information. Certain applications, such as Windows NT 4.0, allow a user to receive and store electronic information on a limited network system. However, the usefulness and flexibility of such systems are severely limited, because each browser installation traditionally has been independent of other browser installations to which a user has access. Thus, information within one browser is not easily transportable to the other browser.
Except as may be explicitly indicated otherwise, the following definitions shall apply:    browser—A program that can communicate over a network using http or another protocol and that can display html information and other digital information.    client computer—A computer that is connected to a network (including computers that are connected only occasionally to the network such as, for example, by a modem and telephone line) and that can be used to send requests for information to other computers over the network.    computer—An apparatus having a processing device that is capable of executing instructions, including devices such as personal computers, laptop computers, and personal digital assistants, as well as set top television boxes, televisions, radios, portable telephones, and other such devices having a processing capability.    computer usage information—Data concerning a person's use of a computer, including such things as what programs they run, what information resources they access, what time of day or days of the week they use the computer, and so forth.    data set—A group of data items; for example, links, keywords, or entries in an address book.    display object—Data capable of display by a computer, including graphical images as well as multimedia presentations or other display data that includes audio in addition to visually-perceived data.    file—Any digital item, including information, documents, applications, audio/video components, and the like, that is stored in memory and is accessible via a file allocation table or other pointing or indexing structure.    graphical image—Visually-perceived data stored in a graphic format (e.g., jpeg, gif, bmp, tiff, pcx, etc.), including electronically-reproduced photographs, graphics, animations, icons, and textual messages.    information resource—A source of information stored on a server or other computer that is accessible to other computers over a network.    keyword—A textual data item used in locating related sources of information.    link—A data item that identifies the location or address of a program or information resource. A URL is a link, as is a path and filename of an information resource.    network—A system having at least two computers in communicable connection, including intranets, personal networks, virtual private networks, and global public networks such as the Internet.    non-volatile data storage device—A memory device that retains computer-readable data or programming code in the absence of externally-supplied power, including such things as a hard disk or a floppy disk, a compact disk read-only memory (CDROM), digital versatile disk (DVD), magneto-optical disk, and so forth.    profile—User-specific information relating to an individual using a computer.    program component—A set of instructions stored in a file in computer-readable format, whether as object code or source code, and whether written in a compiled language, in byte code (such as Java™), or in a scripting or other interpreted language.    program module—One or more related program components.    program—One or more related program modules.    reactively—In response to some type of user input, such as a mouse click on a particular user application or on a link to an information resource.    server—A computer on a network that stores information and that answers requests for information.    software application—A program and associated libraries and other files; for example, a word processing application, a spreadsheet application, or a personal information management application.